Friday, June 24, 2005

Your comments were duly noted. And please don't think I'm on the verge of a breakdown. I am quite comfortable with the idea that I followed medical advice during my pregnancy. And I know I did everything I should have done according to that medical advice. And I've been thinking about it and I really can't even say the doctors should have known something was off.

I had an ultrasound January 26th at 18 weeks and his size was right on track for June 9th delivery. She said everything looked exactly as it should. I had a blood test on February 21st, no GD. I had another blood test on April 1st, no GD. My next u/s was scheduled for May 26, fifteen days after Alex was already gone. Something obviously went horribly wrong between April 1st and May 11th, as far as his size. There is no denying that fact. Even if we discount his weight...he was 20 freaking inches long at 35 weeks, 5 days! He topped all the charts. He would have been a pro basketball player by the time he was born if he had lived.

I have speculations about what went wrong, but I'm not a doctor (though I'm beginning to wonder if I know just as much as they do). Whether Alex's size ultimately killed him or not, remains to be seen...I know that. But it does me no good to hide my head and pretend it didn't happen, or that my body didn't play some role in making it happen. If I decide to have another baby, this will be valuable information that could save his/her life. I have to face that reality.

Sure, I can't help but wonder if there was anything I could have done to change the outcome. I think about, "what if I had done this, or not done that?" What if I had requested a blood sugar monitor to be on the safe side (I had it with my first child, so maybe I should have considered it odd that I didn't have it this time)? What if I had insisted on another u/s sooner? What if I had talked about how unusually hard Alex was kicking me? What if I hadn't eaten the Easter candy? What if I had gone to see the doctor sooner about my sinus infection and asked about how it might affect my blood glucose? What if I had been doing recorded kick counts and not been lulled into a sense that everything was ok as long as I felt him "regularly?"

But as Steve says, hindsight is 20/20. It's not going to bring Alex back. So we move forward with whatever information we have.

I appreciate everyone's concern for my mental well-being. And I appreciate the idea that there could be some other explanation for Alex's death. BUT...even if there is another explanation for his passing, I still have to address the size issue. Sure, maybe he didn't die because he was so big...but he was still big. That is something that points to an obvious problem within my body. I can't pretend otherwise.